The Vodka Incident

In eighth grade our Vice Principal Mr. Watters, who looked a lot like Dick York from the TV show Bewitched, we knew was really just a big kid. He was tall, athletic with a wry sense of humor.

Each morning he’d stand in the courtyard and wait for the school busses to arrive. Placing himself atop a step stool and using a bullhorn, he’d address students as they stepped off the bus.

“Good morning Mr. Schwartz ready for that Spanish test today?”

Mr. Schwartz, being one of the smarter kids in school would answer, “Si, Senior Watters.” Both laughed.

Perhaps because Mr. Watters was in charge of enforcing the dress code, he had a sharp eye out for infractions as students entered school grounds. Each parent received a letter in the mail with the guidelines of how their child should dress. Boys were to wear slacks, not jeans, shirts with buttons, no t-shirts and shoes with laces. Girls were to wear skirts or dresses with the hemline at one inch above the knee, no bare arms, or heavy makeup.

This was the swinging 60’s and hip hugger skirts with white boots were all the rage; as was the make up look of Twiggy. School pulled for conformity and magazines pulled for breaking the barriers and swinging out. It was a constant conflict for many girls.

Some girls notoriously raised hemlines right to the edge of what was considered acceptable. If the skirt looked a bit short, the girl was sent to the office to be measured. The girl was to kneel on the floor and a yardstick brought out. The skirt was allowed to be fourteen inches from the floor to the edge of the hemline. If it was too short, she was sent home to change.

The leggy Beverly was called to the office many times. It wasn’t only for her short hemlines but for what was called her garish make up. She wore thick eyeliner, false eyelashes and white lipstick. Her hair was bleached blonde and often showed dark roots and it was ratted into a high poof. Apparently it was distracting to the boys because she had many admirers who offered to carry her books and escort her to classrooms.

One day, after being spotted in a dangerously short skirt by Mr. Watters, she was told to go home and change. But she lived on the far side of the hill, so her mother was called to pick her up.

Her mother arrived just as the first period classes ended. As Syndi and Lynnie and I walked to our Home Economics class we got a glimpse of Beverly’s mother. She drove a black convertible Cadillac with big fins and a toothy chrome grill. As she got out of the car, a cigarette hung from her bright orange lips. Her hair was the same bleached blond teased to a high peak as Beverly’s. And she wore a really short skirt.

Once in Home Economics and we measured fabric to make aprons, we buzzed that Beverly’s Mom looked garish. I said I’d never seen any woman look that way before. Somebody whispered that they had moved here from New York or New Jersey or some such place on the East Coast.

“Ohhhh,” I said as if that made total sense to me.

That afternoon in P.E. class, I overheard Mr. Watters say to our coach Mr. Phend, “What could I do, her mother wears the exact same clothes and make up?” They both laughed. After that Beverly wasn’t hounded about her make up.

The best part about Mr. Watters was his sense of humor. In eighth grade we had what was called coke dances. Held from 4:00 PM-5:15 PM in the school lunchroom/auditorium. All eighth graders paid ten cents to enter, sip coke from paper cups and listen to music from Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone and Doris Day.

In all honesty, most of us stood plastered against the wall and stare across the room. I huddled with my friends in a corner, making it near impossible for a boy to ask me to dance. But some very brave souls took the long walk and asked girls to dance.

Mr. Watters was a chaperone during these dances and mingled as if it were his party. He talked to everyone in attendance asking about current crushes, and who made the leap to go steady. For the couples he’d ask to see the St. Christopher medal and appropriately smile. He never made fun of us, but enjoyed our twelve-year-oldness.

A gentle but strong presence, he kept tabs on the rebel kids talking with them as much as he could. Always around the school grounds or checking in on classrooms like woodshop or chemistry, he did his best to find trouble before it began.

He knew just where the best spots where kids smoked cigarettes. For instance, behind the P.E. shed. And where they hid to ditch class. He found Joe and Kyle in the bushes along the cross-country trail. There were the occasional times he wasn’t ahead of trouble and as the saying goes things went south.

As I’d said in an earlier post my friend Syndi predicted she and her new crush, Cooper, would be steady’s by the start of school. Cooper, new to the eighth grade, was a tall skinny bird of a boy with reddish brown hair and fair eyes. He presented Syndi with a large St. Christopher medal and boom they were a couple. Because he was the new boyfriend of my friend, I liked him. He was gentle and kind and I felt sorry for him.

Two years earlier I was the odd Midwesterner at Margate Intermediate. The difference was I arrived in sixth grade. All of us were new to school. Cooper arrived in eighth grade and the cliques were already established. I could tell he was from a southern state, not because he had an accent, he didn’t, but he had manners.

Cooper was smart. In fact he was one of the brightest kids in eighth grade. That alone made him a target for the cool kids because the cool kids at Margate Intermediate were the smart ones. To fit in you need the approval if the cool kids, right?

Joe and Kyle head up the cool kids group. They looked like River Phoenix in the movie Stand By Me. They were rich, smart, and beautiful. Cooper instantly wanted to be a part of that group.

I saw myself in Cooper. His desire to be accepted mirrored mine. He wanted attention, as did I. My foray was a shoplifting escapade.

Under the goading of Joe and Kyle, Cooper responded with more and more troubling behavior. Smoking in the bushes, always slipping into class just as the bell rang. As he gained a position in the group, he flirted with the girls that hung around Joe and Kyle.

When the girls flirted back, suddenly Cooper’s girlfriend, Syndi lost her allure. She didn’t wear make up, or tease her hair, or wear short skirts. She was a normal eighth grader and unimpressive. Cooper did his best to force Syndi to break up with him. He stopped phoning her, he stayed away from her during school. One afternoon he kissed a girl in the courtyard. All of the eighth graders saw it. When Syndi heard about it, she was devastated.

I held Syndi’s hand while we walked home. She cried big sobs that came deep from her stomach. Once we got to her house, she told me she’d get back at Cooper. She grabbed a hammer from her father’s tools and smashed the St. Christopher medal. Then broke the chain in ten pieces, stuffed all of it in an envelope. The next morning gave it to him.

When he opened it, he laughed. He said, “It’s in ten pieces. I guess she loved me.” That he didn’t care, made his prestige grow.

Syndi’s standing in school plummeted. She was the girl made a fool of by a boy. It is a sad result of being considered the good person. The victor has to justify behavior and the victim is punished through gossip, rumor and avoidance. I’ve seen it. Worse, I’ve done it.

With a new cool girlfriend and a new position in the hierarchy of hip friends, Cooper was riding high. Luckily, his grades didn’t suffer as he was still one of the brightest in school. But, he was caught with a sock in his underwear in an effort to make himself appear larger in that area, if you catch my drift.

There was some push back from Joe and Kyle that he had no balls. “Do too,” he defended. “Do something to prove it,” they taunted.

And that was the impetus to the vodka incident.

As my school was in southern California, it was a series of buildings called quads connected by sidewalks. Each grade occupied one hub of buildings. Sixth graders were located in the hub near the north field, seventh graders were along the east field and eighth graders were tucked up against the south-facing slope of the hill. Each quad had its own bathrooms and metal lockers for the kids.

Syndi and I arrived at school that morning and noticed our quad was rather empty. We knew something was up. We had lockers next to one another and set about to prepare for first period class.

I saw Cooper slide up next to Syndi. He had on a leather jacket, it looked like an old bomber jacket, and it was so big he swam in it. He whispered to her then left.

She turned to me with big eyes, “Cooper brought a bottle of vodka to school.”

“What?” I held my hand over my mouth.

Syndi shushed me. She pulled me close to her. “Kyle dared him he didn’t have the balls to bring it to school. So stupid always has to prove himself.”

We slowly wandered towards the girl’s bathroom, which was next to the boys. I saw so many different boys huddled together hanging off the rails and leaning against the building. This was the eighth grade area and there were seventh and sixth grade boys huddled together.

Incensed, I felt our precious eighth grade space had been invaded. At this point, I didn’t realize that Cooper had taken the vodka into the bathroom and the boys were taking sips off the bottle.

Suddenly a commotion happened and out of the bathroom voices shouted, “He broke it, idiot! He broke it.”

Bodies large and small rushed out of the bathroom. Boys pushed aside anyone in their way to evacuate the area. Some jumped over the railing to enter the field and hide in the bushes.

Girls in the know, blended into small groups and pretended to put on makeup. I stood like a goon with my mouth open watching the chaos explode around me until Syndi grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

“Come on,” she hissed.

Leading me into our first period classroom, she told me to get a book out and pretend we were going over homework. When I looked around I noticed we were two of a tiny handful of kids in the classroom. I opened my three-ring binder, found my homework and pretended to read. I had bangs at this time and I peeked up through my hair to see out the door into the courtyard. Mr. Watters rushed towards the bathroom area, Mr. Phend at his heels.

Syndi gave me a look that said volumes. “That was close,” she mouthed.

I tried to swallow and discovered how dry my mouth was.

Mrs. White our teacher entered the classroom in a flustered state. Her normally calm demeanor gone, she snapped her fingers at a group standing at the far door peering out. “Get to your seats, the bell will ring in a moment. Call those kids in here.”

A few straggling students entered the room. I noticed I was waiting for an announcement from the principal, and remembered that this wasn’t Minnesota where we had a PA system that connected the classrooms.

In Minnesota, Father Reilly or Sister Mary Rose would lead us in morning prayers and give announcements. When a student’s name was spoken over the PA system such as, “Will Robert Sweeney report to the principals office?” We knew something had hit the fan.

In California the classrooms were separate quads, our first period teacher gave us announcements by reading off a piece of paper from the front office.

We spread the word the old fashioned way: passing notes in class, whispering and gossip. Which brings me back to Mrs. White. As she stood at the front of the class, her face pale, she knew something had happened but didn’t know what. Syndi and I stole looks to one another. It was a matter of time before she would get a notice from Mr. Watters on actions to take.

We caught a glimpse of Kyle being led through the quad by Mr. Watters. But no word was forthcoming from the office, so we were left to ourselves to root out the details.

By lunchtime Mr. Watters was present in the lunchroom. Kids crowded around him as he told them of what happened to the boys caught with the alcohol. The news spread quickly.

Kyle and Joe had been suspended for one month because they drank the most. Several of the boys that had sipped the vodka were suspended for two weeks. However, Cooper was expelled.

Syndi tried to hide it, but I saw her brush away a tear when she heard about Cooper.

While I sat with Syndi in a corner of the lunchroom, Mr. Watters circled past our bench. He leaned down and asked Syndi if she was all right. She smiled up and him and nodded.

That was the magic of Mr. Watters, his being both an adult and a big kid. He understood and noticed. By checking in with Syndi, he let us both know we mattered.

When I think of Cooper, I am reminded of the Greek myth of Icarus. It is a cautionary tale of reaching for too much too fast.

It is a tale of the consequences of wanting instant gratification. It made me think of my mother.